Today is my 307th day exiled from Florence, my hometown. The politicians have corrupted my hometown and the Pope has become self absorbed, letting the power go to his head. The fine forced upon me has not been paid, and they are soon going to exile me for life from Florence. I only hope that one day the people of my city will repent for their sins and relieve me of my lifelong curse.

Waking up, I get out of bed and start my morning routine like any normal routine. My small home is far from Florence, as I have been exiled from there for awhile now. I have been losing sleep, for whenever I drift off, the only thing on my mind is Beatrice, the one for me. Her eyes taunt me as I fall for eternities, and my soul only falls deeper in the darkest corners of my mind. Every night is spent waking up in cold shivers, only to resume, and fall back into the nightmares’ arms which haunt me every night, on repeat.

I have started writing on a new composition, a story about a journey through the Underworld. An opus, a saga. Only bits and pieces have come to fruition, but I see great potential in this idea. Lunch is a regular meal, with Italian cuisine every day, with lamb and grain, with wine to pair with it. Resuming my work, I often take breaks to take a walk and refresh my artistic mind and to gather my thoughts.

At the end of the day, I am alone in peace, and I wind the day down with a light dinner, and by finishing up my day’s work. I am careful not to burn myself out by overworking, so I take it easy during the night in order to get a good night’s sleep.

“And following its path, we took no care
To rest, but climbed: he first, then I– so far,
Through a round aperture I saw appear
Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears,
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.”

And so he divulges from his path, careless and erratic

Pushing forth down into stalactites burning hellfire

The Call of Satan beckons him to come below

Unholy sights behold, suffering and shadows lurk the floors

Where we came forth, and once again the flames wrap around his body

As he embraces the heat and engulfs in unholy fire

Each circle calls itself to me

The heat comforts and warms my soul

As the souls crying out in pain are in unison

A chorus of chronic pain

And a symphony of suffering

Some of the beautiful things Hell bears

Towers of Babylon modeled out of brimstone and ashes

As men’s tongues fail to recreate the words they once used

Language’s sword now torn from their grasp

As their savage sounds emote from their maws

The stairway down, steep and unforgiving

Leads past the souls of the wicked

Down and down, a deep chasm cries out to me

As I descent from the mortal world

And into the arms of the Devil

 The piece I admire is The Inferno , since it is the most iconic of his works. The piece is about his journey through Hell, and gave birth to the idea of the Nine Circles of Hell, a concept still used today in Western culture. Lost through Hell, Dante eventually finds a spiritual guide in the form of the poet Virgil. The book is split into 100 cantos, and depicts Hell as an exotic brimstone landscape with a variety of inhabitants, who all ended up in Hell after death for different sins committed throughout their lifetime. I admire the fresh (at that time) interpretation of the afterlife, and the storytelling through Dante’s thoughts, as well as Virgil’s commentary through his time in the afterlife. Although it might have been normal for the time, I also admire the vocabulary used by Dante when writing the book.

From brimstone beaches washes up my body

My arms are ethereal, as the mortal body has been left behind in the material world

And now, I am lost in the afterlife

The first who greet me on that beach are faceless, as they have lost their identity

Wandering through Limbo, identity has no meaning here, for those who reside here have lost it.

The unbaptised now shamble aimlessly for eternity

And time becomes meaningless as the drive to live has been lost

My identity is fading as I realize my fate among the lost

Faces blend into masks of ether, nobody recognizes my face

As I cannot recognize theirs

Like Rembrandt’s brush blending in shades of vermilion against a landscape of stone pillars

Wasps sting at our backs while maggots eat away their feet

Their reluctance and self interest has turned into their downfall

Charon watches from across the riverbed

As the Earth begins to claim me as its own

I feel my identity slipping away

As I forget my past

Two enemies by blood convene in a sacred garden

Consecrating brotherly love in the face of their masters

Angel and Devil together as a paradox of lineage

One serves a ethereal and divine power beyond, aloft and wrapped in clouds above

One serves the brimstone and flames below, spiriting away weary shades

and the chariot of suffering

An Arrangement to prevent end times

As death benefits neither

The angel denouncing his lineage with devilish deeds 

In the hospice of the devil

Three sons of different lineage

A zealot of doom, Adversary,

Destroyer of Kings,

Angel of the Bottomless Pit,

Great Beast that is called Dragon,

Prince of This World,

Father of Lies,

Spawn of Satan,

Lord of Darkness

An infant gray in lineage, and gray in personality

A child of exotic lands, from a foreign land

Two switched and one sacrificed

The hospice of the devil demands sacrifice

Three sons of different lineage

With intertwined lives unbeknownst to their knowledge

A zealot of doom, cast aside as a gray child

Bringing forth his own dreams without his knowledge

Atlantis from his dreams brought forth

A pyramidion riddled landscape on the seafloor

Brought up to revive a dead people

An infant gray in blood, brought up as the zealot

Gray blood cannot paint the future and shape a landscape

A child of exotic lands, brought up in a gray landscape

Takes the reigns as a tyrant

Four terrors in ancient days, forgotten by mankind

revived into a modern city to ride once more

War, with Scarlet robes and a blade,

Drawn to conflict and shed blood, and fuels the crimson flame

Pestilence, forgotten and reborn under a new alias

Serves to pollute and poison our kin with toxic fumes

Famine, wrapped in lies and false promises

Society fooled by it’s pleasant taste but foul meanings

Death, no longer inhabits a mortal form

Inhabits the ether surrounding, always watching

Inferno-

he had three faces: one in front bloodred;
and then another two that, just above
the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the first;
and at the crown, all three were reattached;

Purgatorio-

Praying to his high Lord, despite the torture,
to pardon those who were his persecutors;
his look was such that it unlocked compassion.

Paradiso- On these the pope and cardinals are intent.
Their thoughts are never bent on Nazareth,
where Gabriel’s open wings were reverent.

The Divine Comedy is Dante’s magnum opus, a three part saga that discusses religion, sin and life as a human being. It depicts the journey of Dante’s journey through the afterlife, and it’s depiction of the afterlife and underworld are still used in media today, as his work is considered a timeless masterpiece, eloquent in its passages and rich in its meanings.

Seventh 1:1

(1) And the LORD approached me, wrapped in light. He announced in all his splendor, “steel yourself against the wind, and grow stronger than those who fall”. (2) So GOD left as he came, wrapped in light, leaving behind him shadows which sprung forth into form.

(3) HIS shades left behind manifested as equine terrors, atop them 4 riders, now seething with malice. (4) And HIS word was realized as a challenge.

One scene from each source that encapsulated the difference between how war was described was during the first Nazi raid on the safe house in the Hiding Place, compared to the infirmary scene at the beginning of Catch 22. While both occurred away from the frontlines, the Hiding Place displayed much more at stake, and characters where much more passionate and proactive in the war efforts, and truly believed in the war cause, while men in the infirmary were nowhere as passionate, and were either in the infirmary to avoid the war, or were only participating due to them being required to do so. Another scene comparison that could share the same cause is the interrogation scene in the Hiding place, where interrogation is treated like a proper interrogation, with lives at stake and threats upon the character interrogated. Compare this to the scene in Catch 22 , where the main character chooses his life before his fellow men’s turning his back upon them in exchange for freedom from the war, while the interrogation scene had the character much more loyal to the cause, giving out a dead man’s name.

Overall, I think I enjoyed writing lyrics in the style of comedic rap a lot. I learned a lot of motifs and patterns used in modern hip hop, and some specifics that only comedic rap uses. Overall, I think my lyrical content has improved a lot since the start, and I learned a lot on writing lyrics as well as weaving ideas I have and how to utilize elements of other genres in them as well. If I had to redo the process, I would devote more time into growing my lyrical content, giving them more depth and layers to emphasize their meanings, or learn how to effectively write lyrics that are purposefully shallow or “bad”, instead of trying to write them lazily intentionally. I would also incorporate better flow into them, as a majority of my verses took flow as an afterthought, and it would be interesting to compose lyrics with flow or rhyme at the center of the stage. I think I could do a better job if i listened to more of the genre to learn from popular artists and how they do it, such as watching BTS videos to learn what the thought process is behind the tracks. As a consensus though, I enjoyed writing in this style a lot, and I would do it again in the future.

Ay
East side west side
I’m North Side brother
Minnesota gangster
Ay
I’m a gangster

I like robbing banks in the enemy hood
Hoodies on we know what’s good
Blood flowing from our enemies like Niagara
Strap in our sweatpants like we take pills (viagra)
Pull up to their hood with the gang in the backseat
About to cause some trouble with the big yellow taxi
Brown rims because we getting nasty (mud)
By going on trails with the boys
(2 bar instrumental)

Minnesota Gangsters we are so hard
If you want to throw down we give out cards
Phone number email and home address
Be polite and show respect
My mom taught me that she loves me very much
I visit her every weekend and buy her lunch
(2 bar instrumental)

Shamone shamone we moonwalk to the park
Bringing our lunches and a big blue tarp
Marking our territory with the tarp so clean
We eat like civilized people skinny and lean
lunches with our vegan chicken sandwich
Salads and wheat crackers with low fat cheese
We don’t sip lean and we don’t pop xans
Drugs are bad and we need to set a good example
For future generations
After we are full of nutrients we are feeling strong
We go to the enemy hood to show them the errors of their ways and what they do wrong
Pamphlets and anti violence posters
Violence and guns are for hosers

Minnesota Gangsters we are so hard
If you want to meet up contact us on out website
We spit bars and are chivalrous like a soundcloud knight
Be polite and show respect
My mom taught me that she loves me a lot
She makes me home cooked meals when I visit her, fresh and piping hot
(2 bar instrumental)

Peace in the hood is what we need
Bullet holes and drugs are society’s weeds
Weed is also bad and you shouldn’t smoke
Money spent on weed will make you go broke
Spitting bars on a Sunday afternoon
yeah it gets cold like Minnesota

(minute long instrumental with other genres randomly coming in)

(key change)

Devolving into madness spoken from the maws of mad men

Pegasus reborn from ashes
Wings of steel
Around the rings of Saturn
Asteroid throughout the violet sky
Strips of streaks of shining photons in its wake

Blood stained sky and the sky stained in our eyes
Image everlasting into our sky stained bloodshot eyes
Bloodshot eyes and a horse drawn carriage in the sky
The sky in our eyes with a blood red heated horse
Bloodshot eyes in a blood red heated horse with wings of steel
And the sun is the jet fuel
Melting steel wings and falling from the vivid sky with crimson streaks
Into the sun
Sun baked earth
Meat Meteor into the mountain
Flesh burned into the stone face
Faces of horror and carnage carved into chronological time
Velvet skies see violent volatile horrors from the earth
Wings engraved and engraved faces
Equine beauty as a forsaken destiny
Meat Meteor into the mountain

Ay
East side west side
I’m North Side brother
Minnesota gangster
Ay
I’m a gangster

I like robbing banks in the enemy hood
Hoodies on we know what’s good
Strap in our sweatpants like we take Viagra
Blood flowing from our enemies like Niagara
Pull up to their territory with the brothers in the backseat
About to cause some trouble
(2 bar instrumental)

Minnesota Gangsters we are so hard
If you want to throw down we give out cards
Phone number email and home address
Be polite and show respect
My mom taught me that she loves me very much
I visit her every weekend and buy her lunch
(2 bar instrumental)

Shamone shamone we moonwalk to the park
Bringing our lunches and a big blue tarp
Marking our territory fat and clean
We eat like civilized people skinny and lean
lunches with our vegan chicken sandwich
Salads and wheat crackers with low fat cheese
After we are full of nutrients we are strong
We go to the enemy hood to show them the errors of their ways and what they do wrong

Minnesota Gangsters we are so hard
If you want to throw down we give out cards
Phone number email and home address
Be polite and show respect
My mom taught me that she loves me very much
I visit her every weekend and buy her lunch
(2 bar instrumental)

Drifting into the hood with our big guns
We work out with our sons
Strong and fit we’ll take them in a fight
About philosophy and poor life decisions.
We always winning
Because we are well studied and properly educated
Don’t skip school kids